alicethewhale

Day 1 and two cups of coffee down the line and i’m enjoying(!!) coming up with hugely unoriginal, alliterated and slightly ironic titles (which are necessary and you’ll know what I mean if you read sociology journals) for my dissertation but can’t quite imagine myself writing any of them yet… how about ‘Curry and Chips: Looking at postmodern cultural identity and what it means to be British’…

Okay so being a bit more seriouserer - I can’t find any real sociological research that’s gone into this, only newspaper articles and dodgy looking political groups. I think it’s a really interesting topic - if a little cliched.

It can be a maybe perhaps uncertainty, but for now it’s back to the drawing board!

P.s. actually, there has been research done on it (of course there has Alice you big idiot) - 

Biku Parekh (The Political Quarterly)

Krishan Kumar (an actual whole book!)

David Miller (Journal of Ethnic and Migration studies)

etc

Oh shizzle. I need to put my originality hat on.

P.s.s. this is the stupidest blog post I’ve ever made and I haven’t even lost my ‘I’ve been working too much’ sanity yet.

So I’m quite behind on this whole blogging thing. I got back from Iceland on Wednesday and am depressed because I become old (/20) tomorrow. I’ve got the last two weeks 52 weeks pictures but they’re both a bit rubbish. And as I couldn’t access the internet to blog about the trip I’m going to post my best/ favourite photograph from each place we stopped off at/ camped at. 

So that’s only 20 rolls of film. Oh God. This will take the rest of my life to develop, scan and edit these photos. Hopefully they’ll be awesome enough to make it worth it ;-)

So I’ll start that in the next week hopefully. Although I won’t be able to get going properly until the students union is open again in September *sigh*

I only have 4.75 hours to go till the end of the world now.

The time has finally come after 9 months of planning when tomorrow evening I hop on a plane and get off in Iceland, one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

Everything I need for the trip is currently spread out in my bedroom so I have no idea if it’s all going to fit in my hiking ruck sack…

However, more importantly, this is the camera gear I’m bringing as I plan to shoot a roll a day of medium format film alongside making a digital movie on my 550D.

1x Bronica ETRS, with 75mm f2.8 (plus grip and metered prism finder)

1x spare film back

10x rolls of provia 400X

5x rolls of velvia 50

5x rolls of velvia 100

5x rolls of kodak tri-x 400

5x rolls of kodak ektar

5x rolls of acros 100

x1 Canon 550D with kit lens

x1 50mm f1.8 lens

x1 58mm orange filter

x1 16GB memory card

x4 32GB memory cards

x5 spare batteries

So not that much really… :P

Anyway, here’s my 52 weeks portrait for this week:

Taken post race for life on the Bristol downs.

I was using Matt’s Pentax MX and it did a funny thing towards the end of the roll where the film got caught in the camera somehow causing several accidental multiple exposures. But I think it adds quite a cool effect :-)

Anyway, better get on with this packing, I’m setting off for home in London in only a few hours… aaaaaah!

Adios!

Everything is all packed away in my new house and it’s feeling more and more like home as time goes on (I’ll have to put some pictures of it up soon!).

This weeks portrait was taken in the tarn in Mottingham. The composition didn’t quite go to initial plans but I quite like it anyway.

I ran race for life on Saturday with my mum and little sister. Admittedly it was only a 5k but I still feel it was a little achievement and I raised £75 for cancer research UK. I did it in about 30mins (that’s a 10 minute mile, I’m told that’s not horrendous which must be good right?)

5 days till Iceland.

Bye.

I’m well on a roll with these late entries… gaaah!

It’s been a bit of a funny dazed kind of week, I’ve moved into my new house in Bristol. It’s HUGGGEEE, and very quirky in a battered student house kind of way.

As in, the kitchen door is painted with chalk board paint so we can write messages to each other and the dining table was clearly stolen from some old cafe as it has a huge logo painted on it.

Oh and the back of my bedroom door has a panda with evil stary eyes holding a gun painted on it… that’s one quirk I might have to paint over. :-/

This pretty much summed up the dazed-ness of the week… 

A very honest in your face portrait of my ugly mug… take of it what you will.

Shot on my fancy new 550D (WHOOP!)

I’m back in London today and spent a lovely afternoon in the park with my little sister aaaaaannnnddd…..

I MADE A GIF!

Byyyyyeeee!

Hellllloooooo!

I am lame, I know.

I have been non stop busy since I got back from London on Friday, helping Matt and Jay move to their fancy new flat, carrying many many boxes up many many flights of stairs, making two trips to ikea then putting together lots of flat pack furniture. The rest of the week up to now has been spent packing up my own flat, realising how much crap I have collected over the year, sending it all off to the dump, recycling LOTS, sending even more LOTS to charity and cleaning bits of the flat I’ve been too scared to touch for a while…

This (or should I say last?) weeks portrait was taken at a calmer moment in my family home in London in a moment of boredom. Yes, in moments of boredom I do enjoy sitting upside down on my sofa until too much blood rushes to my brain, then standing up to a feeling of dizziness and the sight of pretty colours. I’m weird.

It was a pretty laid back week but really good to see my parents, little sister and brother. I filled my time with trips for coffee, long chats, watching flims and a catch up trip to the pub with Charley and Olivia.

I also went to see Jimmy Eat World with Olivia and I have to admit, it was pretty darn fun. We managed to nab cheap tickets by pestering people in the queue who had spares. It’s so the best way to get gig tickets :D

It was great to see Livi too as I hadn’t seen her in about 6 months (she was busy being too clever at university).

Anyway, it seems it’s time to go and collect the keys to my new flat.

I’ve very much enjoyed this (academic) year and now it’s time to start fresh all over again.

I’m a bit scared but mainly excited.

Roll on July :D

Therefore it is now officially summer :D

And of course, the only way to go about celebrating this would be to drink lots and lots of beer (and cider) at the Cheddar beer festival. A notable beer was the ’Blueberry classic’ by Coach House Brewing Co. Tasted like parma violets (amazing!)… only if you like parma violets I suppose ;-)

I also tried Funky Monkey by Milk Street Brewery (admittedly because of the name), Ginger Beer by Penpont Brewery and Yakima Valley by Arbour Ales (who own one of my favourite pubs, The Three Tuns).

And for my 52 weeks portrait, another shot in my back garden, as I’m back home in London again. Looking forward to seeing my awesome London friends and going to see Jimmy Eat World (hopefully) tomorrow. If you happen to have spare tickets, let me know!

Boo!

So since the end of exams, everything has been massively chilled out. I’ve been to the cinema and had a luxury meal at cafe rouge, drunk nice wine, happily strummed away on my ukulele. On rainy days I watched films, danced around in my room to my favourite tunes and spent far too long on the internet. On sunny days I went for walks, drunk Mike’s home brew and lay in the sunshine with a good book and a picnic. Life is good.

I suppose the self-portrait looks like a lazy one. And I’m not going to lie.. it was ;-)

It was taken in Victoria Square in the lovely sunshine at said picnic.

Other exciting things that have happened this week:

1. I bought a 550D (!!!) and now I’m officially broke yet pretty darn excited (the bloody lens arrived first though… the post likes to taunt me).

2. Last night was the society awards, they gave us an ice cream man, a pic n’ mix stand and cider/ale/wine all for free. I got drunk pretty quick :-/

Bristol Real Ale won the award for best event for the real ale festival (all the profits went to Bristol children’s hospital) and my house gets to keep the award at our house as we will be 4/5ths committee (yes we are all massive geeks).

Also, photosoc won the award for best website and came second in the best society category.

What can I say, I clearly just hang out with the best people :D

Time for breakfast (that is being cooked for me!) now.

Laters lovely tumblr-ers. x

Got back yesterday from an awesome weekend of camping/walking/cookie eating/castles/beaches with Stu and Ryan.

On the Saturday we walked up Pen y Fan and three other giant mountains in the surrounding area which made me realise how unfit I have become during the last 6 months. My legs ache so much now! But it was worth it as the views were beautiful.

I had a bit of a film fail though (turned out it was way too dark for 100 speed film) and a bit of a light meter fail (still not sure what’s wrong there) :-(

Not sure if I’m going to post this up on flickr but thought it should be at least worth blogging ;-)

On the Sunday we drove to Castell Coch (Red castle) which was good fun. Then we drove to Severn beach, stood in the delicious severny clay sand for about 5 minutes before realising it would be much nicer to pop to Portishead, in which we spent a pleasant afternoon before heading back to Bristol.

I slept well last night!

At the end of a photographically uninspiring week, Niall, Matt, Tash and I decided to hop on a train for 2 and a half hours and hop off in Weymouth. And I have to say, I couldn’t think of anything I would have loved to do more after a brilliant day of wind so strong you can lean your full body weight against it, waves so big you got covered in salty sea water from 20 meters away and a roast dinner so huge I thought I wouldn’t be able to move for days after eating it.

This was taken with my Bronica, on a walk from Weymouth to Portland. I used pebbles for a tripod, focussed roughly on the area I thought I’d stand and got Matt to press the button for me. I’d say Weymouth is definatly on the list for future exploration.

I’ll post some more pictures later, after my last exam on Friday. Which means I should probably head back to reality. *sob*

Well that explains a lot about life!

So what has happened this week? Well… procrastinating, working, deadline, working more, procrastinating more etc. I have my first exam on Tuesday :-(

Not on Foucault unfortunately (although I could always just throw him in for good measure) … that was also procrastination.

I shouldn’t really say I’m getting bored of reading sociological journals part way through the exam season. But I am looking forward to reading my fun books ;-)

In my current (and ever extending it seems) ‘to read’ pile:

Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Jeremy Leggatt

Room - Emma Donoghue

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray

Can A Robot Be Human - Peter Cave

Identity - Milan Kundera

I remembered this morning why I never drink spirits.

Luckily, I took my self-portrait on Wednesday when I was feeling much happier as I’d just recieved my shiny new Lanikai lu-11 ukulele :D

I tried out rollei cr-200 slide film for this picture. I’ve decided it’s not worth the 50p I saved over my usual kodak elite chrome. Also, I accidentally metered for the (very bright) window leaving myself underexposed. I’ve brightened it up a bit, hence the extreme grain attack on my face (and other places).

So yeah, my new ukulele… I did a really stupid thing with it and starting swapping the strings round (as I play left handed) before realising that it was completely unnecessary with ukes (silly me). I also bought Jays old classical acoustic guitar off him and re-strung that too so I’m pretty efficient at re-stringing, tuning, tuning more and tuning even more now.

I can play a couple of beirut songs, one from noah and the whale and a bit of here comes the sun. It sounds so lovely and uke-y. I also played around with a friends electric uke last night.

They are ridiculous.

Ciao!

It is rather damp outside.

This weeks portrait is a bit random.

I went to two AGM’s and got elected onto two committee’s this week. Cider rep for Bristol Real Ale and NPO (non portfolio officer) for photosoc. Go me! :P

I’m also about to buy myself a Lanikai LU-11 ukulele.

Then I’m going to teach myself Beatles and Beirut songs.

Yayayayayayaaaaaay!

It’s that time of year… again. Deadlines… exams… society meetings… STRESS!
I’m not really getting much work done but I’m still sitting around bored and feeling generally sorry for myself whilst thinking about all the work I should be doing. *sigh*

BUT! 

I spent yesterday afternoon testing out my ‘new’ Bronica ETRS and have concluded that it works and so all is well (see above). The pictures make me happy and I have just purchased a cable release from Hong Kong so I should be able to start creating less confusing portraits that don’t involve window reflections in 12-24 days. :D

Please ignore all of my inappropriate punctuation. 

Lots of love from Alice x

P.s. I started drinking green tea. This makes me a health guru. Yes.

I’ve been back home in London since Wednesday catching up with family and friends and it’s been lovely.

I didn’t bring my digital camera though and couldn’t post film this week as my me super is loaded with an unfinished roll of slide film. So it’s me in my backgarden with my easter egg. :-)

Also, flickr has informed me via Niall’s photostream that my Bronica ETRS has arrived in the post EXCITEMENT-NESS-ESS. *dances*

I get way too attached to my cameras… but it’s probably not a good thing. However, my pentax K-1000 which my Grandad gave me when I was 15 is falling apart now but will always be my favourite ;-)

Byeeeeeeeeee.

I’ve been playing around with Bristol photosoc’s new Bronica ETRSi this week and have just spent the day developing/scanning the roll of Kodak Tri-X that I shot on it as well as deciding… I WANTS ONE!

I came very close to spending £260 on one from ebay but then snapped out of it, realising that I was still a poor student… and will be for at least another few years *sigh*.

Instead I am selling my old digital SLR camera and am going to attempt to raise some money (not by any heroic means mind… i’ll just ask for money for my birthday) so I can buy a Canon 550D and film my super exciting trip to Iceland.

This excites me more then buying my own Bronica, especially as I can just keep borrowing the photosoc one! :D 

I’m tired now so I am going to have a nice bubble bath, read a nice book and have nice dreams about cameras and pretty places.

Goodnight :-)

It’s been an awesome week, full of sunshine, beer and photography.

Of course, the majority of time was spent in and around the dark room for Bristol uni photosoc’s annual ‘week of dark’ in which we spend a week doing lots of fun stuff the good old fashioned way…

This was shot on the Wednesday when I learnt how to use studio lighting and used a Bronica ETRSi medium format camera for the first time :D

I’m a tad disappointed with my self poirtrait though, I think perhaps it would have looked better had the piano been facing straight on to the camera and the bottom wheel wasn’t cut out of the frame.  But heyho it was still pretty fun and there are many more I’ve taken of my friends with silly props left lying around from the latest drama society production.

Also on Wednesday was Matt’s 22nd birthday of which the first half was spent shooting a professional model. The evening was spent celebrating with (lots of beer/cider) and a midnight trip to the local Indian restaurant.

On Friday we played around trying to make our own pinhole cameras out of cardboard boxes. Only Niall and Matt suceeded… I tried about three times, got bored and gave up. My excuse was that I’ve had success before and didn’t need to prove myself :P

We all gave up at about 4pm though and so went to sit by the Clifton suspension bridge with more beer and cider then went home and had a BBQ in the back garden. 

What a perfect start to the spring holidays :D

So I did a bit of experimental developing with Matt today. We made a home made developer called ‘Caffenol’. Here is the result:

Unfortunately for Matt, his film went first and we under developed it (although pictures still came out). I did mine after him and developed it for 6 minutes longer (it was the same film). I’m pretty pleased with the result actually - I was convinced it was going to have some kind of sepia tone but no… pretty smooth looking black and white. Lovely :-)

So… the technical stuff.

1. Dissolve 6 rounded teaspoons of instant coffee in 150ml of water (20°c).

2. Dissolve 4 level teaspoons of soda crystals in 200ml of water (20°c).

3. Mix them together and then mix in 1/4 teaspoon of pure vitamin c powder, then leave to stand for 5 minutes.

The film I used was Rollei RPX 400 and I developed it for 15 minutes, then stopped and fixed as normal. 

Today was a fun day… I am going to conclude it by eating some expensive ice cream and watching a nice film.

Byeyeyeyeye!

Or how you can feel like you’re speeding when you’re actually just driving at about 30mph.

My house mates J (far right) invited me and Becky (and Damien who is in the picture of the karts below - I’m wearing the blue helmet) to come karting with the motor sports society. We were both terrible but it was great fun and I would definitely recommend anyone to have a go. We did a 10 minute trial run (so person with the best lap time is at the front for the race) and we raced for 20 minutes. I came 8th out of 11 in the end but I blame that on the fact that I was mistakenly called ‘into the pit’ (where you are stopped and get time penalties) so I lost about 15-20 seconds on a lap :-(

It was only £15 as well as we got a cool person’s discount, so I’m thinking of joining the motor sports society next year, just for the karting :D

Pretty random blog post… I’m procrastinating… (I also forgot to write about this in my ‘week 12’ post).

Whoop!

It’s been a pretty average week and to tell the truth, I was feeling pretty uninspired when thinking about my portrait for this week so I shoved a load of my favorite bracelets onto my arm and took a couple of snaps. Except it actually got me thinking a bit.

I don’t know if this is the same for everyone but I really find it hard to throw things away; things like jewelry, old diaries/journals, tickets, letters, cards, old photographs (I could go on forever). To the extent that I’m having trouble with the idea of selling my old ipod because it has so many memories attached to it. Even my old broken shoes have meaning to me! It’s the same with most of jewelry - I could tell you a story for each of the bracelets on my arm in this picture. 

I played around a bit on photoshop with contrast and saturation to make the colours stand out a bit but I’m no pro so let me know what you think?

Hooray for slightly pretentious blog posts :P

I like dresses. My wardrobe has lots of them in it. I also like to sit in my wardrobe from time to time…

Two deadlines = complete.

One house, two nights, two parties.

Party number one = too much punch = several hours passed out.

Party number two = 30 people + macerana = nearly collapsed floor… I’m tired now, yet satisfied ;-)

This weeks photograph doesn’t really fit into the party theme but I didn’t really have much time. Weekdays were boring and stressful BUT THEN…

The weekend happened and on friday it was my housemates 22nd birthday party which would have been great had I not drunk too much punch… whoops! Saturday however was the cavers annual general day of fun. I.e. the rather long and boring annual general meeting, followed by a posh meal where we dress up in dresses and suits and aren’t muddy, followed by a fabulously uncivilised party at my flat which resulted in an almost collapsed floor due to much synchronised jumping and a guy with one less eyebrow then when he showed up. Yay :D

This is a picture of a few of us at the beginning of the party :-)

Oh and also, I did my social secretary speech and gave out silly awards such as the scariest drunk and the armchair caver. I got an award as well because I lost two (quite expensive) storage room keys - the award consisted of a giant cardboard key with a ribbon on it to go round my neck so I don’t lose it… :-(

I lose lots of things. I would love it if a void opened up and all my missing stuff magically reappeared.

Hovea pwca!

Yes, snotty! I’ve had a horrible cold thing all week, to the extent that I couldn’t smell that some of the chemicals we were disposing of yesterday afternoon in the darkroom were potentially toxic until Niall started coughing and advised Matt and I to vacate the room for a few minutes… yay chemicals!

On the plus side, I had a lovely time in Devon last weekend. We stayed in a little cavers cottage in a village on the southern edge of the Dartmoor. It was quite a novelty to be in a village with shops and pubs as we’re usually located in the middle of nowhere! After a long drive on friday night we stayed in the cottage drinking and playing pranks on Rob who passed out after downing a half pint of whiskey (after 4 beers). Then on Saturday, we headed to two different caves (but didn’t spend too long in either as Devon isn’t exactly renowned for hardcore caving). Then on Sunday we drove to Teignmouth and walked along this awesome coastal path for a few miles (AND it was sunny!) (AND I took lots of pictures … tbc on flickr) :D

The rest of the week was spent working (as I have a deadline and an exam this week booooooo) with a bit of time in Cotham Porter stores and the Bristol Cider house…. and possibly maybe perhaps a night out at the Keller on Friday. :-)

I may have got a bit tipsy and started professing that I was an expert at cider tasting to the guy who owned the Bristol cider house who went on to discuss tasting notes with me (I nodded). I also found out that cider (and/or cider brandy) goes bloody well with ginger beer yumyumyum. I might be spending my 20th birthday there now… who wants to volunteer to carry me home?

Time to tidy my… bedroom(?) now…

Just a quick post as I’m off to Devon to go caving in 10 mins!

We were going to go on a photo walk to test Matt’s new Rollei but it was raining so we sheltered in the Wills building for a while and then went to the pub…

Exciting thing number 1: Signed for my house for next (academic) year, it’s such a lovely place.

Exciting thing number 2: Bought plane tickets for Iceland (!!!) :D

Right, the cavers are going to be annoyed at me for being late now…

Adios!

I’m a bit late posting this week but I wanted to finish up my roll of neopan 1600 so I could post this…

This week had a bit of a beer theme to it with the above photograph taken at the end of the Friday night at the Bristol Real Ale Society beer festival. I worked so I could get in for free and get paid in beer and cider and that night just happened to be the record night in busyness as we sold out of all the cider (unheard of) and nearly all the beer and still had another night of festival to go (emergency supplies were sourced on the Saturday morning)! It was pretty knackering but I really enjoyed it all the same :-)

Last weekend I had a brief visit my home in South London which was nice, got to see the family and all that jazz. We also went to this pub by Victoria station called cask which was pretty awesome I must say as it had so much choice, and a brew dog beer called ‘Alice Porter’ (yay).

And the third beer themed topic of this week was the brew dog tasting at the Hillgrove in Bristol. A darn lovely pub on a normal night, except on Thursday night one of the brewers came down and did a talk about the company and let us try out their four new beers (whoop). Now I’m not usually a beer drinker but these were tasty tasty beers. I also had a half of  the 10% paradox (lethal!).

Below is Jay with the very odd brew dog mascot. I was informed he/she was road kill… yay? Very soft fur though I must say, I wished I could have asked what brand of conditioner he/she used… ahhh well ;-)

Right, I’m off to go and watch a film with the flat mates now. Sorry for the very badness of my writing, I can’t be bothered to be finickity this week.

Lateeeeersssss!

Literally every spare second I seem to aquire recently gets filled up almost instantly, but in a good way :-)

This is one of the activities I have spent my time on this week… printing :D

I’ve done some boring prints of family for family, as well as exciting ones to further clog up my bedroom wall!

Other exciting things this week included taking part in persuading a drunk girl in wetherspoons to try on a caving oversuit and helmet. Then going to the cinema in caving helmets to watch ‘Sanctum 3D’ - making comments and laughing at the unrealistic parts (how cool are we…). 

Here is photographic evidence of said drunk girl (and Jay)…

Tonight, I’m off to a school uniform themed rock club night (bet your jealous… yeah!). Then home for the weekend tomorrow :D

Hi Mum. Hi Dad.

Term has started once more, so back to lectures (well most of them anyway), endless amounts of reading and happy happy deadlines… On the plus side, it also means everyone has landed back to into the right places i.e. the pub :-)

Also also also, it was sunny today (sunny AND warm… ish) so this weeks photo represents me rejoicing this fact :D

As it says on my flickr, post-processing included upping the contrast (on my super sophisticated software - windows photo gallery) whoop!

Oh oh oh, and last weekends caving was awesome. I didn’t end up going to Charterhouse :-( But I went to another pretty awesome cave called St. Cuthberts and it ended up being quite a tough trip due to lots of very vertical, very high, free climbs (with the addition of getting quite cold and wet). Yet there were still some beautifully well preserved parts of the cave for us to admire throughout. So overall, a very well balanced cave (in my opinion). However, there was no caving for me the next day, I ached SO SO much!

This is a picture of Cat in St. Cutherberts (it’s hard to take decent photos in a very dark place, with a tiny point and shoot).

I’m off to a place called Llangattwg in Wales this weekend. Might go to a cave called Darren. Should be pretty epic :-)

… Well, it’s the end of first semester anyway :D

I handed in my essay this morning at 9:45am having worked on it the entire week, with just one solitary hour in the pub to make up for it… criminal!

I took four attempts at a self-portrait on film this week, using my tri-pod for the first time in aaaaaaages! This was shot on my me super with discontinued Fuji Superia Reala 100, how exciting! :P

This is another one of my attempts, I quite like it but decided on the ‘book for a face’ one in the end :-)

I’m off caving this weekend, haven’t been in so long and I’m pretty excited as I’ll (hopefully) get to go to a cave I’ve wanted to explore for over a year now, called Charterhouse Cave (viastuartgardiner). Who knows, I might even make my own video…

Watch this space.

A very uneventful week filled with revision and exams. I’m so glad the exam part is over though, I actually feel mildly human again :-)

I’m thinking that it’s definitely acceptable to ignore my 3000 word essay (just for today) and head down to the Three Tuns tonight for free beer and fun times with the friends I nearly forgot I had!

I had no time for film photography this week unfortunatly :-(

But the day after my first exam I felt so generally crap that I spent an evening procrastinating in the photosoc Penthouse scanning the film I shot over Christmas and in Rome.

It’s so cool in there, especially at night and I’ve been meaning to take some photographs for ages. I thought it would look really cool with the reflection against the awesome view and had quite a few go’s at the composition… and trying to keep the camera steady without my tripod! This was the result, I probably could have done with some adjustments on light room to sort out the slight yellowy-ness but I haven’t got hold of it yet/ I’m lazy.

I’ll hopefully get another film portrait in for week 4, I’ve got a few shots left on a roll of colour print in my Pentax mesuper which means I don’t have to worry about trying to shoot a whole roll of (decent) photographs whilst writing 3000 words about male sexuality…

To portraiture! … and fun :D

After 4 days in Rome, Alice the enthralling intellectual (as ever) has her two favorite Italian words - fizzy and sale (because I didn’t want fizzy water and as it was January, there were sale’s EVERYWHERE). 

Whoop! Black and white film portrait :-)

This actually came out slightly better then I expected which makes me happy. I’m not sure about the big blob of out of focus rock hogging up the middle and maybe it could do with some cropping (?) but I think the background looks pretty cool and I’m liking the fuji acros 100 speed film as it’s so smooth.

Rome overall was awesome. We went to all the usual touristy places (Colosseum - in which the above photograph was taken, the Vatican city, the Trevi fountain etc) and all the walking was knackering but definitely well worth it both photographically and for the amazing experience. I know I’ll definitely go back there at some point in the future.

A few things I would do to make it better:

1. Look up online/go to recommended/rated restaurants rather then wandering around in the tourist areas - some may look like they are out in the sticks but they are well worth a visit!

2. Managing to take a photograph of a cool looking person on a vespa.

3. Not killing my new Pentax MV by dropping it down lots of steps.

Right, now back to revision *sigh*

This feels slightly odd and terribly vain. It’s almost like I’m 14 again, holding my camera in the air, taking moody pictures for myspace. Yet in a way, it’s also quite exciting; for the first time I’m publicly documenting a year in photographs. I’ve kept diaries before but they’ve always been of the secret kind. This however is all new to me and I’m not entirely sure where it’s going to end up…

New Year’s Resolution: Must stop biting my nails!

I also made some other resolutions/goals - I thought I should write them down here, then maybe I’ll try harder to achieve them… supposedly anyway ;-)

1. Average at least 65 this year (a 2/1) - I’m ‘studying’ Sociology at Bristol University, but it unintentionally seems like a bit of a side project in my life at the moment.

2. Shoot a roll through a super 8 film camera :D

3. Try out medium format film photography - I’m not sure I’d ever buy a medium format camera myself but I’d love to give it a go.

4. Get much better at guitar - I was going to say learn a new song every week but that’s not very realistic. I’m can currently play 2 songs… badly. But I really enjoy it so I guess I don’t mind too much.

5. Make a film of Iceland - I’m determined that this will happen and I’m sure I’ll write a longer post about this at some point. I really want to document a tour round the whole of Iceland, planned for June/July 2010.

6. Get a summer job - hopefully at ‘End of the road festival 2011”.

7. Camp in a cave - I love to go caving and I love a challenge. The ultimate combination of these would be to take part in a “through trip” (from the entrance to the end) of a cave called Dan yr Ogof, sleeping overnight half way through.

That’s all folks.